Monday, June 9, 2025
EVENT: Journey Toward Reparations Webinar: Church of England Reparatory Accountability with Georgia Boon, June 24, 2025 at 7pm
Saturday, May 17, 2025
EVENT: Journey Toward Reparation Webinar: An Indigenous Perspective, with Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg, May 27, 2025 7-8pm
The Reparations Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey invites you to join us for our next webinar in our Journey Toward Reparation on Tuesday, May 27, 2025 from 7:00-8:00pm over Zoom. Our guest speaker is the Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg, the Staff Officer for Racial Reconciliation of the Episcopal Church. CLICK HERE to register for the webinar.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
NEWS: Smartphone Friendly Diocesan Slavery Pilgrimage Guide Released
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
NESRI Database an Invaluable Resource to New Jersey Slavery Researchers
The Northeast Slavery Record Index (NESRI) is an absolutely invaluable resource for researchers of slavery in New Jersey. It is a searchable database of digitized slavery records of various kinds including "census records, slave trade transactions, cemetery records, birth certifications, manumissions, ship inventories, newspaper accounts, private narratives, legal documents and many other sources." You can search by date, place name, enslaver name, or name of the enslaved. The database is a collaborative project with many sponsors and contributors, but is hosted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The website hosts a very helpful article by Ned Benton and Judy Lynne-Peters about "How Religious Institutions Can Study and Redress Historical Enslavement." The documentation of slavery is obviously not exhaustive, but it is an excellent starting point for churches looking to investigate the ties to slavery of former members or leaders of their congregation.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Bishop William H. Stokes on Racism, Slavery, and Reparations in the Church
Originally posted on August 11, 2023, the following article is being republished in the wake of the underlying documents being deleted by the Diocese of New Jersey in February of 2025. The articles can still be found (for now) through archive.org and the Reparations Commission has saved digital copies of the cited articles, but the practice of deleting important records related to racism (even accidentally) must be stopped. We have been able to save these because we were already aware of the target URLs. Many other records that have been deleted may be functionally irretrievable.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
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Original article begins here:
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| Bishop Stokes (seated center-right) at the Diocesan Stations of Reparations Service, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Freehold, New Jersey, March 25, 2023 (photo Jolyon Pruszinski) |
The Rt. Rev. William H. Stokes, recently retired Bishop of the Diocese of New Jersey, made it a special emphasis of the final years of his episcopate to highlight both the historic ties of the Diocese to slavery, and present racism that requires continued redress. His influential support for the work of identifying these problems, repenting, and working to repair them has led, in part, to the creation of the current Diocesan Reparations Commission and to the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review. Below are links to many of his public communications from the concluding years of his episcopate on these topics:
March 16, 2021: “New Jersey, it’s time to tell the truth” – NJ.com
June 25, 2021: "A Call for the Establishment of a Reparations Task Force in the State of New Jersey
Opening Remarks and Invocation" published in the “Bishop’s Weekly Message – June 25, 2021”
October 1, 2021: “House of Bishops, Reparations, and Racial Justice”
February 11, 2022: “Absalom Jones and the Legacy of Black Churches”
March 11, 2022: “Strengthening Disciples for the [God’s] Future (Bishop’s Address to the Diocesan Convention, March 5, 2022”
June 17, 2022: “June 17 – The Legacy of Juneteenth”
October 7, 2022: “Honoring Indigenous People’s Day”
October 14, 2022: “Affordable Housing is a Gospel Justice Issue”
October 21, 2022: “Oct. 21 – Faith Allies and Darnella Frazier”
February 3, 2023: “Black History Month & Jemar Tisby”
February 17, 2023: “Confronting the Church’s Complicity with Racism”
March 17, 2023: “Notes on the House of Bishops Meeting”
June 16, 2023: “Juneteenth Observances”
Thursday, April 10, 2025
NEWS: Diocesan Slavery History Pilgrimage Featured in GNGS
The Diocese of New Jersey Reparations Commission Slavery History Pilgrimage was recently featured in the April 5, 2025 issue of Good News in the Garden State and was posted by the Diocese of New Jersey to its website. The weather is warming up, so now is a great time to go. Invite a friend, or your whole congregation! The pilgrimage guide can be found here.
Friday, April 4, 2025
“Reparations: My Take” by Cn. Noreen Duncan
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| Canon Noreen Duncan[1] |
One of the original co-conveners of the diocesan Reparations Task Force, Canon Noreen Duncan is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ewing, New Jersey. While serving on the Reparations Task Force in 2022, Cn. Duncan wrote the following article “Reparations: My Take”[2] to raise the profile of the work within the Diocese of New Jersey:
Merely suggesting that the United States owes the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans on this land recompense for unpaid labor over several centuries causes some of us to push back from the table and go to watch television in another room. Just saying the word “Reparations” triggers some of us. We protest and argue blamelessness, denial: “My people did not own slaves, did not come to the US until recently.” So I am going to use the word, repeatedly, forcefully: Reparations. The United States of America is an ideal, a vision of the best that humankind could be on this planet. The history of the creation of that identity, of that hope that people could offer each other the finest fruits of human endeavor, was not forged in goodness. Even as the designers of that Utopia on Earth were drafting the outline, they—all men—owned other men, raped women, sold children so that they had the leisure and the means to dream the dream. The ideal, forged among men who had the best intentions, did not come without the most terrible price: the enslavement and attempted annihilation of other men, women, and children. So what is owed the hundreds of thousands of the generations of unpaid builders of the ideal, whose descendants still bear the memory of the lash? Reparations. There is no argument that many of the current citizens of the United States are not descended from former slave-owners. Your story is that your ancestor came in through Ellis Island or Angel Island, or illegally entered and never left, bringing only a letter to find a relative and $8.00. Your ancestor lived in the slums of New York, Detroit, San Francisco, worked in the factories and kitchens and sewers, scratched out a gambling survival, scrabbled to grow farms on the Plains. You do not get a pass, however, by merely asserting the obvious because you are a third generation U.S. citizen. You do not get a pass, because as soon as the descendants of the former slave owners needed your ancestors, they declared them white. And with that declaration, your ancestors were able to claim heritage and brotherhood with the former slave-owners, and they, you, accepted it! So that acceptance joins you in the conversation about Reparations.[3]
A tireless advocate in the work of justice, Cn. Duncan has served as the Trinity Cathedral Academy Board president, on the Cathedral Major Chapter, on the Episcopal Church Executive Council, on the Mission Within Joint Standing Committee, and as the Anglican Church of Canada liaison. She has been one of the primary creators and teachers of the diocesan Antiracism training course, training over 300 clergy both domestically and internationally.[4]
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
[1] Diocese of New Jersey, “Nominating Committee Report, 238th Diocesan Convention,” 3: https://dioceseofnj.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Doc-16-2022-Nom-Cmte-Rpt.pdf). Used with permission.
[2] Noreen Duncan, "Reparations: My Take" was first published February 19, 2022 by the Diocese of New Jersey. It was deleted from the Diocesan website in February 2025. The Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review is posting the text of this article as part of an effort to preserve important historical documents related to slavery, racism, and reparative justice that have recently been deleted from the diocesan website. It is still accessible thanks to archive.org at: https://web.archive.org/web/20220521132323/https://dioceseofnj.org/know_your_story/reparations-my-take/.
[3] Duncan, "Reparations: My Take."
[4] Diocese of New Jersey, “Nominating Committee Report, 238th Diocesan Convention,” 3.
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